Medical imaging often includes creating images and/or video sequences of the human body or parts of the human body for clinical purposes such as examination, diagnosis and/or treatment. These images may be acquired by a number of different imaging modalities including, for example, ultrasound (US), magnetic resonance (MR), positron emission tomography (PET), computed tomography (CT), mammography (MG), digital radiology (DR), computed radiology (CR) or the like. In a number of example medical imaging workflows, such as in the case of a picture archiving and communication system (PACS), a digital image data file for a patient may include one or more acquired images of the patient along with information that may reside with or otherwise accompany the images. This information may include, for example, a study identifier (ID) as well as patient information such as the patient's name, demographics, medical record number or the like.
A PACS may permit the digital imaging data file to be viewed, such as for diagnostic purposes, and/or archived for subsequent viewing and/or processing. The digital imaging data files may be formatted in accordance with a Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) file format so as to facilitate the capture, transfer and storage of the digital imaging data files. In this regard, the source of the digital imaging data file, such as any of the various imaging modalities, may transfer the digital imaging data file through a network to a PACS utilizing a predefined protocol, such as the DICOM C-STORE protocol. While the PACS may store the digital imaging data file for viewing and/or processing, the PACS may, in turn, belong to an enterprise archive, such as an enterprise image repository, to which multiple PACS systems transfer the digital imaging data files collected by the individual PACS utilizing, for example, the DICOM C-STORE protocol, for archival purposes. If desired, a PACS that is a member of the enterprise image repository may subsequently retrieve the digital imaging data file for viewing or other purposes.
The digital imaging data files that are captured by the various imaging modalities and archived by a PACS and/or an enterprise image repository may include relatively small data files, such as data files less than 1 MB, and large data files such as data files greater than 1 GB. As a result of the relatively frequent transfer and storage of digital imaging data files, a PACS system and/or an enterprise image repository desirably receives and stores both small and large digital imaging data files in an efficient manner.
One technique for receiving digital imaging data files involves the storage of the digital imaging data files first into a local memory device, such as physical memory, Before eventually saving the file to its final location in a file storage system. A digital imaging data file may be comprised of a plurality of data packets that may be received by a PACS or an enterprise image repository in a sequential fashion and the entire data file may initially be received using the local memory device, such as in a linked list within the local memory device. The direct receipt of the digital imaging data file using a local memory device is relatively quick and efficient. However, in instances in which the digital imaging data file is large, the local memory device may be exhausted with the PACS or the enterprise image repository being unable to allocate sufficient memory to receive the digital imaging data file, thereby resulting in a failure to receive the large data file. Additionally, as the local memory device may be utilized by a plurality of processes executed by the PACS or the enterprise image repository, the utilization of the local memory device and, in particular, the utilization of a substantial portion of the local memory device, in order to receive a large digital imaging data file, may limit or prevent access to the local memory device by other processes which may, in turn, be forced to utilize other, generally slower, storage techniques. In an instance in which a digital imaging file is received in physical memory, the digital imaging file may thereafter be saved to remote file storage following interpretation by the importing process.
Alternatively, a digital imaging data file may be received by the PACS or an enterprise image repository by immediately writing each data packet to file storage. In this regard, the file storage to which the data packets are written generally requires the transfer of the data packets across a network connection to the file storage. While the file storage may be substantially larger than the local memory device and, as such, may be able to receive substantially larger digital imaging data files, the process of writing each data packet to the file storage may be much slower since a separate input/output (I/O) operation is required for each data packet. While the additional time required to receive a digital imaging data file using file storage may be necessary in an instance which the digital imaging data file is large, the use of file storage in order to receive digital imaging data files is generally substantially slower than the use of a local memory device.
The challenges associated with efficiently receiving digital imaging data files are only exacerbated as a result of the formatting of the digital imaging data files in accordance with the DICOM format. In this regard, the DICOM format does not include an indication of the size of the file and, as such, the PACS and/or an enterprise image repository, may not be notified in advance, as to whether a digital imaging data file is large or small. Additionally, the challenges of efficiently receiving digital imaging data files appears to be increasing as larger digital imaging data files recently have become more common, and they are anticipated to become even more frequent in instances in which digital imaging data files are transferred from a PACS to an enterprise image repository.